A rotten and unfree society

The rotten stench of dictatorship in Thailand grows by the day. Last week the junta announced the key members of the National Strategy Committee, which has been designed to oversee any future elected governments for the foreseeable future. Naturally, top dog is Generalissimo Prayut, followed by his favourite henchmen General “Pig-face” Prawit and General Anupong. Both Prayut and Anupong are guilty of state crimes from the mass murder of pro-democracy civilians in 2010. Alongside other despots in uniform are top bankers and businessmen, representing the Kasikorn and Bangkok Banks and AIS, Thailand’s largest GSM mobile phone conglomerate. Also included are various civilian cronies of the junta and an ex-rector of Chulalongkorn University.

This National Strategy Committee has the power to veto the policies of future governments and remove elected politicians from office. It will ensure an ultra-neoliberal agenda, devoid of any pro-poor policies and block any influence of Taksin and his allies. It is a committee for a permanent “Coup for the Rich”.

In the same week, mass murderers Abhisit and Sutep from the mis-named Democrat Party were cleared of any charges of ordering the killings of civilians in 2010. These two cronies of the military were part of a four-man command centre, along with Generals Prayut and Anupong, who ordered the use of military snipers to shoot red shirts, journalists and medical professionals attending to the wounded. Sutep was also a key leader of the middle-class gangsters who wrecked the February 2014 elections, paving the way for Paryut’s coup.

After Yingluck recently left the country to avoid being jailed by Thailand’s kangaroo court over heading a rice price guarantee scheme, Abhisit sniggered about her “fleeing justice”. The kind of so-called justice that Eton and Oxford educated Abhisit was talking about, lets mass murderers go free while jailing opponents of the junta who dare to speak out and politicians who try to help the poor. At a recent trial of student democracy activist Pai Dao-din, a military witness claimed that peaceful protests against Prayut’s military coup were a “threat to democracy”. One is immediately reminded of George Orwell’s book “1984”, which is banned in Thailand. So, “Dictatorship is Democracy”, Freedom of Expression is a Crime” and “Mass Killings are Keeping the Peace”.

The backwardness of the pro-military royalists can be seen by the way that ex-Prime Minister Yingluck has constantly been subjected to sexually degrading insults, ever since the middle-class anti-election protests in 2014. The latest sexually degrading insult was from a so-called national poet.

The inclusion of the ex-rector of Chulalongkorn University in the National Strategy Committee fits with the general policies of this university. Student activist Netiwit Chotipatpaisarn, and his fellow elected student assembly representatives, have had their “behaviour marks” cut for objecting to first year students being forced by academic staff to grovel to royal statues in the rain. One lecturer assaulted a student representative by holding him in a head-lock, pulling his hair and shouting obscenities. There is no word of any action taken against this lecturer.

The cutting of the “behaviour marks” for students like Netiwit, means that according to the university regulations, they automatically are excluded from holding office as student assembly representatives. The vile authorities in charge of this university have staged a “coup” to topple elected representatives; a trait favoured by the puffed-up generals who now run the country.

The whole idea that mature university students should have such a thing as “behaviour marks”, which can be cut by academic staff, and that they should be forced to wear uniforms and grovel to dead kings is a pathetic example of the state of education and academic freedom in Thailand.